Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/08/26/magnetic-hourglass.html
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Do you see that? That’s how long you’ve got to be alive–and it isn’t long, my pretty!
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This might be fun to play with.
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We used to call these executive toys.
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A warning to the impractical: As I found out the hard way, you don’t want to apply some strong third party magnet to the outside of this thing.
I did this and the thing adhered to the filings so strongly it broke a hole in the hourglass as it was being removed.
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So I shouldn’t take it near an MRI?
Near is a relative term.
Just far enough and maybe the iron filings will do interesting things.
yes, but without doing this the entire thing is a total letdown.
i was so unimpressed by this thing that I did not give it to my brother-in-law for christmas nor did i keep it for myself. i white-elephanted it and the guy that got it at the office started adding 3rd magnets to it cuz it was such an awful thing.
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That was when executives had offices that could store such crap. Now it’s a tossup whether anyone sub-CEO has an office rather than just hanging out in the open office like a peon programmer/engineer.
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I got one of these in one of my VSauce Curiosity boxes. And yeah, it’s only interesting for like 5-6 seconds before it just turns into a mound like any old timer. The video shows about how long you can expect interesting shapes before cutting away. (And in fact, is a little more generous than the one I have.)
Hm, I wonder if you could cheat with this by putting a stronger or weaker magnet under there and thus manipulate the timing…
Ferromagnetic Time.
One that goes the ‘wrong way’ would be cooler.
It would have to be smaller with a powerful electromagnet on top tho.
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And while you’re looking at the patterns… I just won Boggle.
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